Jeremy Hollows Joins Soft Solutions as Managing Director, Northern Europe; Former Carrefour Group Director Set to Speak on ''Retail Information Management'' at Retail Systems Conference, May 26.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jeremy Hollows, new Managing Director for Soft Solutions Northern Europe, will be speaking as a panelist at Retail Systems' TechTours event in Chicago later this month. The TechTours section of this trade show will feature several educational panels led by technical professionals from leading international systems providers.

Hollows will speak as a part of the "Collaborative Commerce" panel. The panel will discuss improving interaction among trading partners, third-party providers and consumers. More specifically, the panel will examine new collaborative trading practices, global data synchronization, collaborative transportation management and other issues associated with changing retail business processes. Hollows' most recent public presentations include the Global Retail Technology Conference (2003) and the National Retail Federation (2004).

Hollows comes to Soft Solutions from the Carrefour Group where he was most recently group director of Business-to-Business and GNX at the Group Head Office in Paris, France. As B2B group director, Hollows was responsible for development and deployment of group wide business-to-business initiatives for purchasing, supply chain and information technology.

Before coming to Carrefour in 1999, Hollows had a successful career with Unilever. From 1975 through 1999, Hollows worked for the company in several different roles in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Canada (Unilever Canada/TJ Lipton Canada) and the United States. Hollows earned his bachelor's in economics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1975.

More information about TechTours and the panel please refer to: www.retailsystems.com/industryevents/ Index.cfm?PageName=RS2005techtoursprogram. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Learn more about Soft Solutions at our booth (Booth #1123) at the Retail Systems Conference and Expo or visit our Web site at www.softsolutionsus.com.

About Soft Solutions

With more than 80,000 active users worldwide, Soft Solutions is a leading provider of web-based merchandise management and decision support software. Our customers are multi-divisional, multi-format Tier 1 retailers including Auchan, Carrefour, Group Louis Delhaize, Kingfisher, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, and Galeries Lafayette. The Soft Solutions Suite conforms to the latest industry and technology standards and is compatible with multiple databases, industry application server packages and EAI solutions. In addition, Soft Solutions partners with leading edge consulting and solutions providers to extend its solution suite in areas such as forecasting, advanced analytics, and optimization. Visit our website at www.softsolutionsus.com.